Title in the Language of the Records

Please add the title in Russian here.

Record Description

This collection covers various church denominations and their records, such as baptisms/births, marriages, and burials/deaths for the area now belonging to Tatarstan. Places are identified by their historical name and jurisdiction when it was part of the Russian Empire. The collection includes records from 1850 to 1935. Most churches priests created the records in registers that were kept at the local church archive, and a duplicate copy was sent, at a later time, to a higher level church archive for preservation.

Record Content

Key genealogical facts found in baptism records may include:

Date and place of baptism

Name of principal (usually an infant)

Age or date of birth of principal

Names of parents and their residence

Names of godparents

Sometimes names of grandparents

Witnesses

Key genealogical facts found in marriage records may include:

Date and place of marriage

Names of bride and groom

Ages of bride and groom

Names of parents

Residence of all involved

Witnesses

Key genealogical facts found in burials/death records may include:

Place and date of burial

Names of the deceased

Place and date of death

Age of the deceased

Cause of death

Residence

Sometimes parents may be listed

How to Use The Records

Begin your search by finding your ancestors in the index. Name indexes to baptisms, marriages, and death or burials make it possible to access a specific record quickly. Remember that these indexes may contain inaccuracies, such as altered spellings, misinterpretations, and optical character recognition errors if the information was scanned.

When searching the index it is helpful to know the following:

The place where the event occurred

The name and surname of the person

The approximate date of the event

The name of the parents or spouse

Use the locator information found in the index (such as page, entry, or certificate number) to locate your ancestors in the records. Compare the information in the record to what you already know about your ancestors to determine if this is the correct person. You may need to compare the information of more than one person to make this determination.

When you have located your ancestor’s record, carefully evaluate each piece of information given. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details that can lead you to other records about your ancestors. Add this new information to your records of each family.

For example:

Use the marriage date and place as the basis for compiling a new family group or for verifying existing information.

Use the birth date or age along with the place of birth of each partner to find a couple's birth records and parents' names.

Use the birth date or age along with the place of birth to find the family in census records.

Use the residence and names of the parents to locate church and land records.

Occupations listed can lead you to other types of records such as employment or military records.

Use the parents' birth places to find former residences and to establish a migration pattern for the family.

The name of the officiator is a clue to their religion or area of residence in the county. However, ministers may have reported marriages performed in other counties.

Compile the marriage entries for every person who has the same surname as the bride or groom; this is especially helpful in rural areas or if the surname is unusual.

Continue to search the marriage records to identify children, siblings, parents, and other relatives of the bride and groom who may have married in the same county or nearby. This can help you identify other generations of your family or even the second marriage of a parent. Repeat this process for each new generation you identify.

Use the marriage number to identify previous marriages.

When looking for a person who had a common name, look at all the entries for the name before deciding which is correct.

Keep in mind:

The information in church records is usually reliable, but depends upon the reliability of the informant.

Earlier records may not contain as much information as the records created after the late 1800.

There is also some variation in the information given from one record to another.

If you are unable to find the ancestors you are looking for, try the following:

Check for variant spellings of the surnames.

Check for a different index. There are often indexes at the beginning of each volume.

Search the indexes and records of nearby localities.

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Contributions to This Article

We welcome user additions to FamilySearch Historical Records wiki articles. We are looking for additional information that will help readers understand the topic and better use the available records. We also need translations for collection titles and images in articles about records written in languages other than English. For specific needs, please visit WikiProject FamilySearch Records.

Please follow these guidelines as you make changes. Thank you for any contributions you may provide.

Citing FamilySearch Historical Collections

When you copy information from a record, you should list where you found the information. This will help you or others to find the record again. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records.